Platinum Games Isn’t Working on Granblue Fantasy: Relink Anymore

Platinum Games has announced that its contract with Cygames has ended, and it will no longer be working on the development of Granblue Fantasy: Relink.

“While we, PlatinumGames, have been working with Cygames in co-development of the upcoming console game Granblue Fantasy: Relink, we officially announce our contract on the project has come to an end,” read the blog update. “Development will still continue, but be handled solely by Cygames’ internal development team.”

Granblue Fantasy: Relink was announced at TGS 2016 for PlayStation 4 and PSVR. Featuring characters from the original game, the title was a collaborative project between Cygames and Platinum Games.

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Kingdom Hearts 3 Has Shipped Over 5 Million Copies

Square Enix has reported that Kingdom Hearts 3 has officially shipped over 5 million units globally, making it the fastest selling game in the history of Kingdom Hearts.

The number includes both physical and digital copies across all platforms since its launch on January 29.

Kingdom Hearts 3 is the sequel to Kingdom Hearts 2 and focuses on the power of friendship and overcoming the darkness with light. Disney characters such as Donald Duck and Goofy join the wielder of the Keyblade, Sora, to stomp out the evil known as the Heartless.

The game features eight Disney-themed worlds, including environments from Frozen, Big Hero 6, Hercules, Pirates of the Caribbean, Winnie the Pooh, Tangled, Toy Story, and Monsters, Inc.

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Apex Legends Drew in 1 Million Players in Less Than 8 Hours

Respawn Entertainment’s free-to-play battle royale game went live yesterday, and had over one million unique players within eight hours of launch.

The studio’s CEO, Vince Zampella, tweeted the news early Tuesday morning, saying that he was “overwhelmed” and adding in, “Thank you so much for showing up and being part of this with @Respawn you are amazing!!”

Apex Legends reached a peak of almost 500,000 viewers on Twitch and is sitting at around 200,000 at the time of writing, according to GitHyp.

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Game Of Thrones Prequel Starts Filming This Summer

The Game of Thrones prequel TV show will start filming early this summer, HBO has confirmed. Programming president Casey Bloys confirmed the production start time with Entertainment Weekly.

This matches up with the timeline that Bloys confirmed previously when he stated that the untitled prequel show was pegged to begin production in the first half of 2019.

Jessica Jones director SJ Clarkson is directing the show, which will star Naomi Watts. Importantly, what’s being filmed is only the single pilot episodes; additional episodes have yet to be ordered.

X-Men: First Class’ Jane Goldman is the showrunner for the new Game of Thrones show. Goldman created the concept for the show alongside writer George R.R. Martin. According to EW, while only one episode has been ordered so far, the writers are already working on more scripts for future episodes in the event that HBO decides to pick it up to become a series.

The show isn’t expected to air until at least a year after Game of Thrones ends, so that means it may not come out until 2020 or 2021. It’s also possible the show doesn’t get picked up to series.

Here is the official description for the new prequel show: “Taking place thousands of years before the events of Game of Thrones, the series chronicles the world’s descent from the golden Age of Heroes into its darkest hour. And only one thing is for sure: from the horrifying secrets of Westeros’s history to the true origin of the white walkers, the mysteries of the East to the Starks of legend… it’s not the story we think we know.”

In other news, HBO teamed up with Bud Light for a wacky Super Bowl commercial promoting both the beer and the final season of Game of Thrones. The eighth and final season premieres in April.

LEGO Set Deals: Star Wars, DC Super Heroes, Jurassic World, and More

If you buy something through this post, IGN may get a share of the sale. For more, read our Terms of Use.

LEGO makes some of the coolest toys around, and a number of excellent sets are on sale online right now at both Walmart and Amazon, complete with free shipping. There are plenty of reasons to love LEGO. Not only do they make some of the highest-quality toys on the market, but you also get to assemble them, which is creative and satisfying in its own right. Once you put together a set, you’ve actually accomplished something. It’s kind of like seeing the credits roll on a video game, except now you have a physical object to show for it. Let’s take a look at some of the LEGO deals on right now.

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Apex Legends Has A Battle Pass That’s Just Like Fortnite’s

Respawn, the developer behind Titanfall and Titanfall 2, has released a new battle royale game called Apex Legends. Much like Fortnite, Apex will have a Battle Pass, and it works just like the one in Epic’s battle royale game.

Although the game is already out, Apex’s first Battle Pass won’t launch until March. Each season runs for about three months, with the start of Apex’s season two scheduled for June, season three for September, and season four for December. Respawn has not announced the exact dates that each of these seasons start, but they have revealed what buying a Battle Pass will get you.

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Like Fortnite, each Battle Pass includes a collection of limited-time cosmetic items. Each Apex Battle Pass will include around 100 different rewards, which you can unlock through playing the game. Several items in each season can be unlocked without the need to purchase a pass, but you’ll need to buy one in order to earn everything. Once you unlock something, it’s yours to keep–even in following seasons. Every Battle Pass will only include exclusive, seasonal cosmetic items and random Apex Packs, the latter of which is an assortment of weapon and Legends skins of various rarities. So you won’t miss out on unlocking new Legends if you don’t buy the Battle Passes.

Apex Legends implements similar mechanics and features from previous battle royale games, but adds its own spin on the formula as well. In Apex, you have to fight in squads of three, and each member of your team will control one of eight unique Legends (all of which have some pretty cool Legendary skins). Although every Legend can use any of the weapons and equipment scattered throughout the map, each one has their own unique assortment of abilities–much like Heroes in Overwatch or Operators in Rainbow Six: Siege.

Although Titanfall’s staple wall-running and Titans aren’t in Apex, the game does incorporate other elements from Respawn’s franchise, such as vaulting, sliding, no fall damage, and traversing great distances with jump jets. Almost as if a play on the developer’s name, you’re also able to respawn in Apex, as your teammates can bring you back from the dead–albeit without any of your loot–if they act fast enough.

Apex Legends is free-to-play and available for Xbox One, PS4, and PC.

Pokemon Go Adds New Shiny Pokemon In Lunar New Year Event, Now Live

The annual Lunar New Year event has returned in Pokemon Go. From now until February 13, certain types of Pokemon will appear much more frequently in the wild than normal, and Niantic is offering players extra XP for catching and evolving monsters–as well as a chance to catch a new Shiny.

Throughout the event, players will have a much easier time of finding Rattata, Ekans, Mankey, Ponyta, Electabuzz, Dratini, Mareep, Miltank, Torchic, Poochyena, Spoink, and Buneary–all Pokemon that correspond to the Chinese zodiac. To commemorate the Year of the Pig, Shiny Spoink will also be available for the first time.

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On top of that, players will earn twice the normal amount of XP when they capture and evolve Pokemon. Additionally, monsters that are traded during the event will have a higher likelihood of becoming Lucky Pokemon, which require less Stardust than normal Pokemon to power up. You can tell Lucky Pokemon apart by their sparkling backgrounds.

Shortly after the Lunar New Year event concludes, Niantic will host Pokemon Go’s next Community Day. That event is scheduled to take place on Saturday, February 16, and it features its own pig-like Pokemon: the Ice/Ground-type Swinub. Players will also receive triple the normal amount of Stardust during this month’s Community Day.

Niantic recently introduced a new wave of Gen 4 Pokemon to Go, including Lickilicky, Tangrowth, Froslass, and Gallade. A new Gen 4 Legendary, Palkia, also debuted in Raid Battles following the end of the recent Hoenn celebration event. Players have until February 28 to catch the Spatial Pokemon before it leaves Raids.

FX Boss Slams Netflix’s Ratings As “Not Remotely Accurate”

Twice a year the Television Critics Association press tour sees TV executives, actors, showrunners, and producers present their new programming to the press. Among those who regularly attend is FX CEO John Landgraf, who first coined the term “peak TV” and uses his regular executive sessions as what are essentially television state of the union addresses. Increasingly, his sessions has included a lot of talk about Netflix and other streaming services as they outspend and outproduce everyone. With this tour, though, he took particular aim at Netflix’s viewership claims.

In years past, Netflix has always been very protective of the viewership for its shows, often saying they don’t release viewership numbers. That started to change with the release of The Christmas Prince in late 2017. “To the 53 people who’ve watched A Christmas Prince every day for the past 18 days: Who hurt you?” the company said in a tweet. From there, Netflix slowly began releasing viewership numbers with very little context for what exactly counted as a viewer–a move that has irked many. “[You] is on track to be viewed by more than 40 million members in its first four weeks on Netflix,” one tweet from the streamer read, referencing the Netflix original series. Another claimed, “[Sex Education] has come out with a bang–the smart and emotional series is on pace to be watched by over 40 million accounts over its first month.” Those numbers sound massive, but the vagueness of that claim has rendered it dubious. FX CEO John Landgraf has now reaffirmed those numbers are not what they seem.

Taking the stage for his twice-annual executive session at the Television Critics Association press tour, the head of FX Networks spoke openly about his distaste for Netflix’s reporting, which he called “cherry-picked and unverified internal data.” Specifically, Landgraf took aim at Netflix’s You claims, saying they were “not remotely accurate representation of a long-form program performance.”

Why is that? Because unlike the way TV ratings are gauged, technology companies count video starts, rather than average audience. That means if someone started an episode of You but turned it off after five minutes, they count as a viewer. Beyond that, these are numbers Netflix is providing about Netflix, leaving them free from independent oversight. “I don’t like the notion that any one entity gets to decide what is true and tell you what is true,” Landgraf said.

Interestingly, even with more realistic viewership numbers, Netflix still boasts some impressive ratings. According to Nielsen–the company that measures traditional TV ratings–You was likely actually watched by an average audience of 8 million viewers, which Landgraf points out is “good, but it’s not as good as 40 million, which would make you the number one show on television.” Likewise, a show like Sex Education–which Netflix also claimed was on pace to be watched 40 million–only had around 3.1 million viewers.

That’s not to say the Nielson’s numbers are remotely exact, but they go to show that the picture Netflix paints isn’t quite accurate. The way Netflix presents their numbers is calculated, for lack of a better word.

It makes sense that they would present their viewership in the best possible light. However, as Landgraf explained, that could harm the streaming service in the long run. “One way or the other, the truth will always come out,” he said. “As it always does.”